Bashabi Fraser with her husband Neil in Edinburgh. (Picture by Amit Roy)

Edinburgh, Sept. 18: As Bashabi goes, so might Scotland today — if the final final opinion polls are right.

Bashabi Fraser, nee Bhattacharya, ex-student of Brabourne College, Calcutta, and now professor of literature and creative writing at Edinburgh Napier University and joint director of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies— she has other titles — is probably the most distinguished Bengali in Scotland.

All these months she has kept her own counsel and not revealed how she was going to vote in the referendum in Scotland, which has been home for over 20 years.

She showed The Telegraph her poem, The Border, taken from a book she has edited, Bengal Partition Stories: An Undisclosed Chapter.

It begins: “There was a time when you and I/ Chased the same butterfly…”

This morning at 9am, accompanied by husband Neil Fraser, a retired lecturer in social policy at Edinburgh University, she went to her local polling station near her home in Edinburgh — and voted “No”.

Neil voted “No”, too, but because he did not think Scotland could share the pound with England and still be an independent country.

But Bashabi was in emotional turmoil. “As a writer I feel people should be free if they want to be free,” she said. “There must be a good reason why so many Scots don’t feel free — they vote Labour but consistently get an English Tory government.”

At the same time, however, as an Indian, she could not but be aware of the tragedy of partition in India. “I don’t want any more borders.” As for her identity, “I am Bengali first, my main identity, but I can be both Bengali and Indian. And my loyalty is to Scotland.”

She revealed: “My daughter is very angry with me.”

Rupsha, 30, a scientist, could not be in Scotland today but instructed her mother to cast a proxy no on her behalf. She had been worried her mother was leaning towards “Yes”. “My daughter feels Scottish but also British and did not want to choose between the two.”

Bashabi’s father, Bimalendu Bhattacharya, 85, who divides his time between Calcutta and Edinburgh, is staying with his daughter and son-law at the moment.

He is a geographer — “shara jibon mastari korechi” (I have been a teacher all my life). He has taught the subject in Guwahati, IIT Kharagpur, Presidency and North Bengal University in Siliguri and been a Commonwealth scholar at the London School of Economics.

Handing The Telegraph a copy of his book, Geography of Deprivation: An Unfair World, he had the detached and yet intuitive view of the referendum. He was not for a separate Scotland.A country needed space for development, he has always told his students. “More space means more room, more room means more development. Brazil has come up because it has so much space. Same with China. A small country like Scotland cannot have proper development if it cuts itself off from England.”

He could not speak more highly of the Scots, “polished, very kind, very courteous. I have been coming here for 20 years, and I have never been pushed here. I am treated better here than back in India”.

Bashabi goes back to her poem: “It is dedicated to Syed Hussein Shaheed Soherwordy — a Pakistani scholar who came from Peshawar University to do his doctoral degree at Edinburgh University — where I met him. He is back teaching in Peshawar.”

The poem ends by highlighting the pain of separation — and it was relevant today in Scotland though there had been no violence during the referendum campaign: “The border that now decrees/ Our shared past with two histories/This border that now decides/The sky between us as two skies/This border born of blood spilt free/Makes you my friend, my enemy.”

But Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond was probably unaware of the poem as he was joined by two first-time voters, 18-year-old Natasha McDonald and Lea Pirie, 28, at Ritchie Hall, Strichen, in his Aberdeenshire constituency, this morning.

Salmond gave both women a soft “Yes” toy as a mascot for their vote and the trio stopped for pictures on their way into the polling station.

Despite long days of campaigning, the First Minister said he managed to get a good rest on the eve of the vote.

“I got a fantastic night’s sleep, obviously there’s a great deal of anticipation, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it’s a day that everybody will remember,” he said.

“Natasha and Lea are voting for the first time and so will so many people in Scotland, not just 16 and 17-year-olds, but people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. We’re in the hands of the people of Scotland and there’s no safer place to be than in the hands of the Scottish people.”

Better Together leader Alistair Darling was greeted by a mixture of cheers and boos as he arrived at the Church Hill Theatre in Edinburgh to cast his vote.

He said: “It’s been a long, hard two-and-a-half year campaign, passions have been aroused on both sides, and understandably so because we are talking about the biggest single decision that any of us will ever take in our lifetime. But I’m increasingly confident that we will win tonight.”

The number of ballot papers in each box will be counted by a 5,767-strong counting team and the total will be reported to the chief counting officer (CCO) who will authorise the local counting officer to announce the turnout.

The papers will be sorted into “Yes”, “No” and those deemed “doubtful”. These will need to be judged and possibly rejected as spoiled.

After reporting to the CCO, each local authority will announce its result, with the first declaration expected at around 1.30am.”

By late afternoon a fog had descended on the mountains known as Salisbury Craggs making them look like the setting for John Buchan’s The 39 Steps. Not far away beyond Arthur’s Seat among the peaks was the Scottish Parliament where TV cameras from all over the world were setting up for what looked like being the longest night in Scottish history.